Wednesday, April 25, 2007

OSHA Doesn't Care About Workers Anymore

The federal agency that was set up to enforce federal workplace safety regulations is now officially a sham. President Bush and his faithful followers have been hard at work dismantling the government and they seem to be succeeding at it all over the place. One example is from a microwave-popcorn plant in Jasper, Missouri. Workers became mysteriously ill and state officials couldn't explain it. So they turned to the feds at OSHA. Unfortunately for the workers, they continued to get sick and nothing was done to save them.

From The New York Times:

That response reflects OSHA’s practices under the Bush administration, which vowed to limit new rules and roll back what it considered cumbersome regulations that imposed unnecessary costs on businesses and consumers. Across Washington, political appointees — often former officials of the industries they now oversee — have eased regulations or weakened enforcement of rules on issues like driving hours for truckers, logging in forests and corporate mergers.

Since George W. Bush became president, OSHA has issued the fewest significant standards in its history, public health experts say. It has imposed only one major safety rule. The only significant health standard it issued was ordered by a federal court.

The agency has killed dozens of existing and proposed regulations and delayed adopting others. For example, OSHA has repeatedly identified silica dust, which can cause lung cancer, and construction site noise as health hazards that warrant new safeguards for nearly three million workers, but it has yet to require them.


OSHA, like so many other safety and regulatory agencies are rapidly falling apart and succumbing to the practice of political patronage. So many people are being brought in for jobs that they have no experience for. It seems that their only pre-requisite is either working for or donating to the Bush/Cheney campaign.